Starting today, people in the U.S. who need health insurance can go to healthcare.gov to enroll in a plan through their states’ new exchanges.
There’s a lot for pro-lifers to love about health insurance reform. All plans offered on the exchanges must cover prenatal care, delivery, and care for mother and baby after birth. Prior to the Affordable Care Act, most individual insurance plans didn’t cover maternity care, and women who were already pregnant often couldn’t get insurance at all.
In addition to the reform of maternity care coverage, the ACA requires insurance plans to cover a number of preventive services with no cost-sharing. These include, but are definitely not limited to:
- Breastfeeding support and counseling
- Domestic violence screening*
- Family planning (except for those employed by exempted religious organizations) *
- STI testing and counseling*
- An array of children’s preventive health services
Having these vital preventive services available without a co-payment will help more women and children live healthy lives as well as making it easier for women to avoid unintended pregnancy and abortion.
* These are currently required to be covered for women but should be available without cost-sharing to everyone, in my opinion.
